The present disclosure relates to a contact-pressure detecting apparatus detecting a contact pressure of a contact object, and an input apparatus inputting control information to a control-target device by using the contact-pressure detecting apparatus.
In a manipulator, a sensing means such as a pressure-sensitive sensor, an ON/OFF switch, or a proximity sensor is provided on a surface of an arm or a hand or provided on a surface of a work. Based on outputs of the sensing means, the position and the shape of the work are recognized and reflected on operations.
Meanwhile, with the development of electronic equipment devices in these days, in man-machine interface devices typified by a mouse and a remote controller, not only means for turning on/off the limited number of switches arranged on the interface device, but also means for detecting positions, operations, and a grasp force of hands and fingers that operate the device as control signals are desired.
For example, Japanese Patent No. 4065618 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1) discloses an apparatus including a number of sensors arrayed on an object surface in a mesh (array) form. The apparatus detects pressures, displacements, and the like generated when the object surface deforms to thereby detect an external force applied on the object surface.
However, in such a detecting apparatus including a number of sensors arrayed in a mesh form, in order to improve detection accuracy, an extremely large number of mesh divisions are required, and the number of sensors to be arranged may correspond to the mesh division. The reasons are as follows.
1. The sensor capable of effectively receiving an applied pressure is limited to a sensor immediately below the point of application of a force or a sensor extremely close to the point. Therefore, variations generate in outputs of sensors according to positional relations of points of application of a force and sensors detecting the force. It is thus difficult to accurately detect applied pressures.
2. In a case of detecting the position of a point of application of a force, the detection resolution depends on the arrangement density of sensors. Therefore, a number of sensors are required as a result.
When the number of sensors increases, the cost increases as a matter of course, and the number of electrical wirings to the respective sensors also increases. Such a number of wirings are easily obtained by photolithography process. However, because of characteristics of photolithography process, modes of a sensor-arranged surface may be limited. For example, in photolithography process, a flat detecting surface is easily obtained. However, it is difficult to obtain a three-dimensionally curved detecting surface, specifically, a detecting surface having a target curved-surface shape.